Blackberry Playbook (Hands On)

Preface

I’m going to be upfront. I’ve never been a fan of Blackberry. Sorry folks. The first Blackberry I ever used was given to me as a work phone and it was a lovely Blackberry 7200. At the time I already had a Motorola Q (back in the days when Microsoft dominated mobile), so needless to say, I felt like I was downgrading phones.

I was forced to use it if I wanted to save mobile minutes for sales calls. Being a young broke male fresh out of MBA school, I gave in. The experience was awful and over the years I’ve grown to dislike the Blackberry OS and functionality. I have nothing against Blackberry. It’s just my money and time lay with the best operating system I have the choice of using at any given time. Right now, I’m an Android user.

Blackberry’s Messiah

However, the Blackberry Playbook is changing my mind about how Blackberry operates as a company and about the value they can bring to the technology landscape. I had the opportunity to meet with Blackberry at the 2011 CES show, and to my surprise, their booth was packed, their booth staff was friendly and even more, the Blackberry Playbook was solid and impressive. Seeing the Blackberry Playbook hands on genuinely made me think the Playbook could be Blackberry’s Messiah – their savior of mobile sales.

However, the one thing we do not know about the Playbook yet is pricing. Is this thing going to be $700 like the iPad 3G? If thats the case I don’t feel the Playbook is worth it. So just how much do I think its worth? $399-$599 is what I would be willing to pay… not just as a consumer but as a business owner and IT manager.